Welcome to the 19th Century, Mexico
Mexican Stamps Racist, Civil Rights Leaders Say
The Mexican government issued a series of stamps yesterday depicting a dark-skinned Jim Crow-era cartoon character with greatly exaggerated eyes and lips, infuriating black and Hispanic civil rights leaders for the second time in weeks.
Mexican postal officials said the five-stamp series features Memin Pinguin, a character from a comic book created in the 1940s, because he is beloved in Mexico. A spokesman for the Mexican Embassy described the depiction as a cultural image that has no meaning and is not intended to offend.
The images (here) are, or would be in America, obvious racist stereotypes common from the era in which they were created. Think: Sambo or the early WB cartoons. While I don’t think Mexico has the same kind of cultural shame and foundational problems with race that America does, I can’t imagine this character being regarded warmly by black latinos. I’m looking forward to the upcoming 5-piece stamp collection release featuring “Hymie the Jew” followed by a Charlie Chan retrospective.
Update: here’s an image for you
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Most mexicans think the whole thing is hilariuos, and now thanks to the demmand, the emision of the stamps would be doubled…
This comic book character is loved by almost four generations of mexicans, because it set a mature discusion on family values. Memin comes from an era where comic books were read by people of al ages, parents, grand parents and children enjoyed the comic book, and discuss the situations of the characters. Most of the characteres were poor people, like most of the readers of the comic. The content of the histories, includ stories about poverty, parental abandonment, death and alcoholism. the only time when the character found discrimination, was in a story when he travels to the US….
You must remember that, altough there was an importan black population of slaves, after almost 5 centuries of mixing, is actually rare to found a mexican with a skin enough dark to be called “negro”, so it is hardly a racist term. Just remember one of the most popular mariachi songs is called “El son de la negra”.
This is the link to the house that own the right to the characters (still is selling)
http://www.mundovid.com/inicio.asp
and this is a link to my own forum of comics books, where we discus about it:
http://foros.kaliman.com.mx/discus/messages/41/4029.html?1120505666